desmoking the smoky Buenos Aires air with a jacuzzi

[Kragen Javier Sitaker]

It was kind of a chilly late autumn here in Buenos Aires as I wrote
this, 2008-04-19; but, because of this [rather remarkable
environmental
phenomenon](http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2008-04-18
MODIS image of the fires and smoke), I had the air conditioner turned
on full blast.

This is apparently the best we can do at avoiding the smoke that
blankets the city, and I thought I should document the crazy scheme
I was using, since it seemed to work.

The Crazy Scheme
----------------

I heated the house a lot using the water heater; like many Argentine
houses, we have one of those wonderful tankless water heaters, which
can provide an unlimited supply of scalding hot water unless they
catch on fire or melt or something.  (Don't laugh; our friends Kevin
and Alicia's caught on fire several times.)  So I ran the shower very
slowly to fill up the jacuzzi tub (we have a jacuzzi tub, you see),
then started the bubble jets running to transfer more of the heat into
the air, while using a fan to vent the hot, humid air from the
bathroom to the rest of the house, to give the air conditioner more
heat to chew on.

(Unlike, say, the stove, the hot water heater is properly vented to
outside, with a little horizontal metal chimney.  And it has a hell of
a gas burner inside.)

I ran the air conditioner because it does remove some of the smoke
from the air, but it's driven by a thermostat, so it would stop
running if the air cooled off.  So that's why I used the hot water
heater to heat up the house.

It turns out that the hot shower and the jacuzzi bubble jets also
remove smoke from the air.  There was quite a bit of smoke deposited
around the edge of the bathtub now from the bubbles.  Photos will be
forthcoming eventually if I didn't lose them all.

The humidity added to the air also ameliorated the eye and bronchial
irritation from the smoke.

Fine-Tuning
-----------

I added a little shampoo to the water in order to make it pick up
smoke particles and transfer heat better.  (Smaller bubbles, less
spherical bubbles, and less tendency for the water to repel smoky oil
particles.)  Unfortunately, jacuzzis being jacuzzis, this resulted in
a huge mass of bubbles growing from the water and threatening to swamp
the bathroom.

So I added a little conditioner, and the bubbles died back down.

In general, the surfactant action I was looking for and the foaming
action I got are not inseparable.  I wonder if I could get better
results with dishwasher detergent, for example (although ideally
without bleach), industrial degreasers, or some simple combination
like Calblend plus simethicone.

The placement of the fan in the bathroom door proved important.  Ideal
would be a fan at the other end of a long duct, either blowing cool,
dry air into the bathroom, or sucking hot, wet air out of the top of
the bathroom.  What seemed to work best with the fan I have was
blowing hot, wet air out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, where
the air conditioner is.  This produced a certain amount of fog.

Real Air Filtration
-------------------

I was hoping to try to get a HEPA filtration system for the house.  I
knew it would't be easy, because there aren't many stores here that
sell them, and due to the smoke, even the stores that carry them
seemed to be out.  So we made do with N95 respirators, which I bought
at a pharmacy that evening after hunting for hours for something
better.

We spent a lot of yesterday and this morning with wet bandannas around
our faces, inside the house.  I have a headband that I used to secure
the bottom of the bandanna against my chin, and I rolled up strips of
paper towel to put on each side of my nose to block the spaces there.
That seemed to provide some noticeable protection.

I picked up some deionized water at Carrefour that evening; I figured
it might work better for air filtration than tap water.  I'm not sure
whether it did or not.

I wish I had some way of measuring the smoke, other than by counting
how often I cough, because I'd like to know (for example) whether the
N95 respirators work better than the bandannas, or even whether
they're effective at all against smoke.